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Landscape and Power
Landscapes, whether in pictures or the world, have been viewed as a genre, treated as texts, interpreted as allegory. Landscape and Power goes beyond these approaches to ask not just what landscape "is" or "means" but what it does , how it works as a cultural practice. The original essays in this volume consider landscapes not merely as visual or textual symbols but as sources of social and personal identities.
In the opening essay, W. J. T. Mitchell examines the ways in which the concept of landscape functions in the discourse of imperialism, from Chinese imperial landscape to views of contested territory in New Zealand and Israel. The following essays—by Ann Jensen Adams, Ann Bermingham, Elizabeth Helsinger, David Bunn, Joel Snyder, and Charles Harrison—range from Dutch landscape and the formation of national identity to picturesque landscape and the process of political silencing and legitimation. Other topics include Turner's "tourist landscapes" as reflections on the conditions of political representation, American landscape photography and the "professionalizing" of the frontier, "domestic" British landscapes transferred to South Africa in the nineteenth century, and forms of resistance to ideology in modernist landscape painting.
In the opening essay, W. J. T. Mitchell examines the ways in which the concept of landscape functions in the discourse of imperialism, from Chinese imperial landscape to views of contested territory in New Zealand and Israel. The following essays—by Ann Jensen Adams, Ann Bermingham, Elizabeth Helsinger, David Bunn, Joel Snyder, and Charles Harrison—range from Dutch landscape and the formation of national identity to picturesque landscape and the process of political silencing and legitimation. Other topics include Turner's "tourist landscapes" as reflections on the conditions of political representation, American landscape photography and the "professionalizing" of the frontier, "domestic" British landscapes transferred to South Africa in the nineteenth century, and forms of resistance to ideology in modernist landscape painting.
248 pages, Paperback
First published May 16, 1994
About the author
W.J. Thomas Mitchell
102 books64 followersWilliam J. Thomas Mitchell is a professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. Editor of the journal Critical Inquiry.
His monographs, Iconology (1986) and Picture Theory (1994), focus on media theory and visual culture. He draws on ideas from Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx to demonstrate that, essentially, we must consider pictures to be living things. His collection of essays What Do Pictures Want? (2005) won the Modern Language Association's prestigious James Russell Lowell Prize in 2005. In a recent podcast interview Mitchell traces his interest in visual culture to early work on William Blake, and his then burgeoning interest in developing a science of images. In that same interview he discusses his ongoing efforts to rethink visual culture as a form of life and in light of digital media.
His monographs, Iconology (1986) and Picture Theory (1994), focus on media theory and visual culture. He draws on ideas from Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx to demonstrate that, essentially, we must consider pictures to be living things. His collection of essays What Do Pictures Want? (2005) won the Modern Language Association's prestigious James Russell Lowell Prize in 2005. In a recent podcast interview Mitchell traces his interest in visual culture to early work on William Blake, and his then burgeoning interest in developing a science of images. In that same interview he discusses his ongoing efforts to rethink visual culture as a form of life and in light of digital media.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 14, 2012
Fantastic anthology of critical geography from the mid 90's. Overall a critique of landscape as system of representation. Many great contributions esp. W.J.T. Mitchell's "Imperial Landscape", Joel Snyder's "Territorial Photography" and Edward Said's "Invention, Memory and Place".
February 17, 2018
Some very interesting content about the relationship of landscape painting to land ownership, land use and wider concepts of power in the cultural contexts of specific paintings. However the book lacked a consistent overview to hold the chapters together.
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November 4, 2019I’m amazed I’m only reading it now. I may have come across some of it earlier- I remember reading an essay about Dutch landscape painting and it’s relationship to the politics of a country claimed from the sea dramatically, the seventeenth century landscape painting that ensued its rapid population.
( Ann Jensen Adams’ “Seventeenth Century Dutch Landscape Painting”). I found it in a tattered paperback on my art school’s kitchen table back in the nineties.... and wondered for years how I could figure out where to find the book.
Here it is - very pertinent to my work as a painter. The intro by WJT Mitchell:
“The aim of this book is to change “landscape” from a noun to a verb. It asks that we think of landscape, not as an object to be seen or a text to be read, but as a process by which social and subjective identities are formed.”
Let’s landscape.
( Ann Jensen Adams’ “Seventeenth Century Dutch Landscape Painting”). I found it in a tattered paperback on my art school’s kitchen table back in the nineties.... and wondered for years how I could figure out where to find the book.
Here it is - very pertinent to my work as a painter. The intro by WJT Mitchell:
“The aim of this book is to change “landscape” from a noun to a verb. It asks that we think of landscape, not as an object to be seen or a text to be read, but as a process by which social and subjective identities are formed.”
Let’s landscape.
October 14, 2025
3 1/2 stars for the three essays I read. Jonathan Said is a fantastic writer, by far the standout of the book
April 11, 2026
I was enjoying the essays until the final ones become so political and dense they lost me.
June 2, 2009
Great book! Particularly the essays by Said and Mitchell. I love Mitchell's assertion that landscape is a verb and should be considered a discipline of art.
July 18, 2016
At its best when discussing the way ideology constructs actual landscapes, what "views" occlude. Missing agents in many contributions
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews